SEAFOOD MARKET

Today I went down to South Center Mall to go do some shopping for a
birthday present and discovered they added a new market in it. It's
called Seafood Market and caters to the Asian community. It even had
our favorite drinks. Yakult for me and Calpis for Mimi. Saw that in
the near future they are going to put in a Disney Store.

WORD OUT

....................is that we should start seeing referals start coming as soon as tomorrow. I CAN'T WAIT!!!!! There is a person by the name of "Krista" on China 33 who is in our group 123. Krista says that she has a friend with another agency who is also LID June 14 as we are. That agency is expecting a packet of referals from China tomorrow. Krista also confirmed that Norman is expected to come back on Monday and be in the office on Tuesday of next week. So Allyn and Teri, if you want to come with us, let us know. We would love to have our China family with us on this auspicious occassion.

STILL LOVES NOODLES

Although I packed a lunch for her and she ate it while waiting to get our fingerprints done, she had to eat again at Uwajimaya.

YESTERDAY'S EXCURSION

.....to get our fingerprints done. Mimi has gone through this whole process from the begining so I thougth why stop now? Therefore we took her out of school early and had her go with us to Tukwila where the new immigration building is. The brown building is the original immigration building that is located in the International District formerly known as China Town in Seattle. As you can see, it was a cold day yesterday.

JUST A FEW PICS OF THE FATHER/DAUGHTER DANCE

V* I* C* T* O* R* Y*

Asked Mimi where she wanted to go for her victory lunch and she said Red Robin.

HOME MEET "DERBY DAYS"

That was the theme for this particular meet. These videos were from last Saturday morning's home meet. Although St.Patrick's Day was over, that was the theme none the less cause it is Coach Kelly's favorite holiday. Once again Mimi was the sign carrier. Although Elsie did not do as well this meet, she still won ribbons and medals. Mimi got 1st place for the trampoline and 2nd place for the double mini. We are so proud of all of our Summit girls.

The video of the girl running, jumping and twirling is Elsie. The rest are of Mimi.

ANNUAL FATHER/DAUGHTER DANCE

Way too exhausted to put up the pics. Will do so at a later date. Our Saturday started off with the usual lollygagging by Mimi and me desperately trying to get her ready for the morning's competition at our home gym. Grandma and Grandpa were supposed to come but then at the last minute bowed out. Grandpa had the trots. I thought that we were supposed to be at the gym by 9 and instead found out that it was supposed to 10 instead. Oh my! I guess I should have checked into it earlier. Oh well. Que sera sera. At least we were early and not late. So I guess if you are to make a boo boo, that's the way to do it. So I made the best of our time and helped with the set up even though dad helped the night before. I helped the ladies with setting up the concession stands. This way I could get work hours toward our account and don't have to pay as much. I found out that Halli's gym does not do this. So they have to pay the full amount everytime. Now we have a plant sale going on too in order to make $$$$ for the gym. Any hoo, Mimi did real good and won first place for the trampoline event in her level and second place for the double mini. One of the perks for her being one of the younger athlete is that the younger ones get to go first and they are done for the day. Mimi also go to carry the sign during the march out. So I guess she is still shorter than Elsie. Elsie did pretty good too although she has done much better in the past. She is still having a smidgen of trouble with the twirling in the air bit. The competition was followed by a "Victory Lunch" at Red Robin. Mimi was sooo tired from fighting with me all week long that she nearly fell asleep in her mac 'n' cheese. A nap was in order for her when we got home. Since our huge blowout and discussion, things have gone back to normal again. Poor baby, thinking that dad and I were going to break up and she would be tossed aside. Next thing I knew it was time to get her ready for the father/daughter dance and get the house ready for my get together with the ladies. Got Mimi and dad off without a hitch. The ladies and their little men came over and we had a very lovely talk. Brandy had a rough day, I had a rough week and Julia had a rough couple of months. For Brandy, it was her daughter Halli that gave her a rough time, for me it was Mimi, for Julia, it was Olivia and Jack. Halli hemmed and hawed about going to the dance with her dad. Then Julia explained that for quite some time (15 months to be exact) Andre has been out of a job. Which was something we all knew. So she went back to work while he stayed home with the kids. Then for the past couple of months he would take odd jobs at night as soon as Julia would come home. This passing of the baton was starting to affect the kids to where they started to notice the kids acting very clingy with Julia or Jack and Olivia would sleep together everynight. Fortunately Andre got a steady job a couple of weeks ago and things are back to normal for them. We all came to realize the importance of how all of our kids tend to internalize things and their surroundings. I do hope that I can better help Mimi express her feelings better. I think that she is starting to better understand this whole adoption process and what we have to go through to get her Mei Mei. Tomorrow we will take her out of school to go down a do another set of fingerprints then just hang out as a family. Not sure what we will do but we will celebrate somehow in this milestone of an addition to our family unit. BTW.......Mimi called home during the dance to say a quick "hello" before I heard her say "OOPS! Gotta go! They're playing my favorite song!".......click. When the dance was over all the girls came to the house with their dads and we all had a smashing time together. The dads said that this year the girls actually danced quite a good number of dances with them. So of course you know......that made them really happy.

THROUGH THE RINGER

........that is what Mimi put me through this week! And somehow I survived it! Maybe that's why why I never watched all of those survival reality shows. Cause I'm actually living it.



All this week to put it lightly, Mimi was a real pill! We had a huge and I mean huge blow out yesterday morning. It's the talking back, lollygagging in the morning, and then some. The only day she did not lollygag was the day of the field trip. Then she was up and ready at the crack of dawm. Hmmmm, what's up with that??? It was really starting to get to me. I had to practically drag her to school. She went there kicking and screaming all the way. As I passed my friends on the way, I asked if it was too early to start drinking.



Just after arriving to school, we had a talk with the teacher regarding her behaviour. Teacher says that basically Mimi is an angel when she is in school. Somehow that is not coming across to the home life.



I was sooooooo happy to see Lisa when she brought Emily to the house and we went for a long walk around the lake. By the time we were finished, man was I exhausted. But it was a good kind of tired. Butch was thoroughly pooped out too.



For quite some time I had been thinking about WHY Mimi has been acting the way she does. I shared this with Lisa and Rhonda and my thinking is that it's because her little world is getting ready to change in a couple of months and she is not sure how she feels about this situation.



When I went to pick her up from school, she was all smiles and kisses and the teacher said that she had a great day. But when we got home........that was another story. Again, there was another humongous blow up. Then came the " I HATE YOU!!!" Ahhhh, don't you just love those. A phone call was put into dad as he was on his way home warning him about the rough waters ahead and to be on the look out. Finally I was able to get Mimi to decompress and that is when all of the screaming, hugging, tears came flooding out of her.



Tried getting her to use her words but all she could do was scream into my bosom, cry and hug me hard and I mean hard. I hugged her hard right back. I figured that the girl has so many mixed up emotions in her that she just doesn't know how to express herself. So when she calmed down, we talked.



She asked me "mom, why do people take off their wedding rings and smash them?" "What???" I thought to myself. "Where did this come from Mimi" Somehow she got the idea that dad and I are going to split up. Dad and I had a stupid argument which was out of pure frustration of daily life and such. Mimi heard us and in her mind, we were going to split up. I definitely had some explaining to do. Then she was worried about how it's going to be having a little sis around and that we may love and care about her more than we do Mimi.

Needless to say we had a long, long, long conversation with the girl last night about how much she means to us and how much we mean to each other.

She is feeling so much better today thankfully.

MORE PICS FROM THE WOODLAND PARK ZOO

ON THE BUS

.......to Woodland Park Zoo.

STILL WAITING

Put a phone call into the USAA office today and was told that Norman is in China and won't be back until April 6th. Maybe he is working on getting our referals????????? Oh I do hope so. None the less we have an appointment to get our fingerprints done again for the umpteenth time.

FIRST SIGN OF SPRING

Last Sunday was the first day of Spring. My backyard is still sparse
despite the Daffodils that are starting to bloom. My Tulips and
Hyacinths are sprouting buds but no flowers as of yet. By summer we
should have a beautiful yard once again. Unbeknownst to Mimi, dad
purchased a outdoor playset last night. She had been really wanting
one ever since we moved up here to Maple Valley. She wore me down and
I was able to talk dad into getting a small wooden playset. I was
partially wanting to get it for myself as I was looking down the road
to what is in store for me with our next chili pepper.

MY ANGEL'S BACK

After a week of yadda, yadda, yadda's, roiling of the eyeballs, then
there were the "Oh yeah you are" when I resigned as her laundry lady,
sprinkled with a bit of profanity, Mimi has learned her lesson I am
happy to announce.

ROUGH WATERS

Not only did the tsunami hit the country of Japan but it hit here at our house as well. How can someone with such an angelic face and so small be soooo EVIL?! And to think that we are going for chili pepper #2. Am I a gluten for punishment or what?

For the most part Mimi is a really good kid but man oh man did she give me a run for the money this week.

All week long it has been the snotty attitude. Also I must mention the lies has started. I then tell the kid that she is not a good liar. She always gets caught so she may as well give it up.

Then when I told her that I am going to quit folding her clothes since I found her clean clothes all piled up on her closet floor and strewn about her room, the girl says with the snide remark "yeah, you are. You're going to fold my clothes" I think not. Then there was the "so what's?!" sprinkled with several "damn's"

By yesterday I was soooo through with the kid and I brought out the big guns. All electronics were taken away, you know, tv, computer, DSi's, Wii's, CD player, MP3 player, DVD, walkie talkie, yup, I think that's about it. Then the even bigger gun came out when the girl had a total meltdown about the electronics being taken away........no birthday/sleepover at Erin's tomorrow night. The plan is also for her to take Erin's present over to the house and explain to Erin WHY she is not able to join in the fun.

Then came last night when the invite to Kate & Ethan's party came. Mimi opened it up this morning and I explained to her that if this nasty attitude keeps up, she will miss out on that party too. No skin off of my nose.

My angel is back. Need I say more?

KAMIS

That's the boy's name. Truth be told I like "Gordo" better. The owner just now come to pick him up and asked what she could do to repay us. The only thing I told her was to....."GET HIM CHIPPED!!!" Of course I said it in the nicest way that I could.

The woman said that her co-workers chastised her for not doing it yet. She said that she was afraid to hurt him. Let's see......hmmmm...... a little bit of discomfort and being able to find your family pet should he/she escape OR not getting him/her chipped and not being able to find your family pet should he/she escape. BEEP!!! I choose the little discomfort of a shot. That's all it is. The chip is the size of a rice grain and is given in a shot form. Butch had his done when he lost his huevos.

Especially up here in western Washington where we have the high winds quite often especially during the Fall season and this year it came along with the rain season as well.

That's how Kamis got away. We had the rain/wind the other day and he got loose. The woman said her co-workers asked if Kamis has a license to which she answered "yes". Then they asked "WHERE IS THE LICENSE?" She answered "On his harness, hanging up in the house." Doh!

HOUSE GUEST

As you have seen in our earlier blog, I found a big black Pug roaming our neighborhood last Tuesday. It was a cold and rainy day that day. Being the animal lover that I am, I just could not leave him out there all by himself and so I brought him in.

We started to call him "Gordo". No reason, it just seemed to fit him and his personality. He is well trained and well fed. Just the sweetest dog you could have. Butch loves to play with him and Stanley likes it because both dogs leave him alone.

Well.... yesterday I had Gordo checked and he is not chipped. I also went around the neighborhood putting up posters including the school. I also brought him to the school when I went to pick Mimi up from school, there are always so many kids wanting to pet the dogs. Girls especially. I asked everyone if they knew this particular black Pug to which they all said "No".

So ok, we go home and Gordo spends another night at the Putney household. I just could not bear to bring him to the animal shelter. At the same time Mimi was working on dad trying to get him to say "yes" into keeping him in case the owner doesn't show up.

This morning Mimi says to me "Dad says we have too many dogs already. IT'S ONLY 2! What's up with that???"

Around 10 this morning I recieved a phone call from another Glacier Park mom and she said that she saw me at the school yesterday with the Pug and she recognized him but did not think anything of it till this morning. She said that Gordo belongs to her neighbor and the other day when it was really rainny and windy as you have seen my umbrella in our previous blog, well....that was when the gate blew open and Gordo left his home.

Lucky for him he ended up here what with no license, collar or chip. Hopefully the owner will call me today.

When I shared the news with dad, he said that Mimi was wearing him down and he is just about to give in to her. Which is big because he is not much of a dog person like I am but Butch is worming his way into dad's heart too.

ST. NICK

Mimi still believes in Santa. I hope that we can keep this up at least until Mei Mei is old enough to understand. In truth, there really is a Santa and his name is..............dad. At least that is that way for us.

This morning I asked the girl if her room was clean and she answered "Yes". Went to her walk - in closet and there they all were.........her clean clothes all in a pile and everywhere else. Just all strewn about.

That is the moment I resigned as her clean-up mom. I told the girl that from now on I will wash her clothes but it is up to her to fold them and put them away. If she doesn't then they will get wrinkled and that will be the way she will wear them to school and everywhere else.

I also informed the child that if she continues to yell and scream "NO!!!" (which flies out of her mouth real fast these days) and phone call will be put into S.C. and he will have to skip out on bringing her presents this year and only bring them for her Mei Mei.

A phone call was put in to S.C. at his workshop this morning much to Mimi's dismay.

ANIMAL LOVER

On the way home yesterday, I saw this dog wandering my street. Being the animal lover that I am, I just had to bring him home and try to find out who he belongs to. So far my search has reached a dead end.

He had no license, no collar and is not chipped as I have found out today. I would say that the only bad thing about him is that he snorts loud and often. Other than that he is just the most sweetest, gentlest dog there is. He and Butch get along swimmingly and he leaves Stanley alone. Another nice thing about having him here is that Butch also leaves Stanley alone. "Gordo" as he has become to be known keeps Butch company. However he is quite a bit bigger than Butch so he tries to push Butch out of the way. He is way heavier than Butch too which may be why he snorts/snores so much. While here, he is on a diet.

Hopefully we will be able to find his rightful owners. So far I have posted his picture on facebook and all around the neighborhood.

YIPEE!!! NO CAVITIES!!!!!

Which is a miracle in itself. For the past year the girl has been
doing these take the toothbrush and wave it across my teeth and wa-
la my whole mouth is clean kinda routine. My hard work is starting to
pay off.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

High wind and rain this morning. Amidst all this wild weather, my
flowers are getting ready to bloom.

PROFANITY

It has already started........sigh. The girl said "damn" today. Between dad and I, we don't use that kind of language with each other but I do know that she has picked it up most likely from her friends at school. Then there is grandpa........whose favorite swear words are shit, damn and hell.

LAST NIGHT'S BIRTHDAY/SLEEPOVER

Soon as we came home from the competition and dinner, Mimi showered
and washed all of the goop out of her hair and we headed over to
Sara's for some more fun. There was Sara the birthday girl, Julia,
Shirley(Ling Ling), Mira and Mimi. Of course it's not a sleepover if
there's no pillow fight involved.

VICTORY DINNER

At Azteca Mexican Restaurant. One of the nice things about being one of the younger athletes is that they get to start the competition first. So therefore Mimi was in the first session for today's competition. There were 2 sessions total. The first one started at 1:15 this afternoon and did not finish till almost 5:00 this evening. If we did not have the sleepover at Sara's, we most likely would have stayed to cheer the rest of the team. Summit did really well the first half. So many of our girls placed 1st and 2nd. Pictured here is the necktie Mimi made for dad out of the napkin. Must say the girl is quite creative.

Maple Valley Summit Gymnastics athletes compete in tumbling and trampoline meet

Maple Valley Summit Gymnastics athletes compete in tumbling and trampoline meet
Found this on Rhonda's FB post this morning. This was the gym's first meet of the season at our home gym. Although the paper says the next meet is March 26th, it was actually today but our next home meet is March 26th which is next Saturday. That is also the day of our local father/daughter ball in the evening. It seems that the older Mimi gets, the more our weekends are filled with family, friends and fun, fun, fun. I love it.

THE MARCH IN

Mimi has always been the smallest of her friends even though she is older than most of them in her age bracket. She is about 6-7 months older than Elsie but they run neck in neck with the height. However Mimi has a very shapely stature which is starting to put the scare into dad. As such, Mimi and Elsie are among the smallest teammates and the smallest teammates gets to carry the banner. I think I can safely say that this is where the friendly competition comes in between Mimi and Elsie. They both want to carry the banner. Today was Mimi's turn to be shorter than Elsie.None the less, we are so proud of our little monkeys.

THELMA AND LOUISE aka MIMI AND ELSIE

Taken at the award ceremony part of today's event. Mimi won 2nd place for tampoline which is a shock in itself because she forgot her routine and mainly just jumped around. She recieved 3rd place for the double mini. Elsie won several awards herself, I'm just not sure what place.

Elsie and Emma also won a very nice "mom" raffle basket today. It was full of linens 'n' things. Last time it was Mimi who won the raffle basket.

PUNISHMENT

Every kid has their price. For the most part, Mimi is a super duper good kid. Now and then she has the ablity to test me and really work my nerves. This week was one of them. Nothing serious but she has become the "Princess of Stall and Sassy". Daphne says that Sara is the "Queen of Stall" so I call Mimi the "Princess of Stall and Sassy" since Mimi adores Sara and copies everything she does.

This has been a short week of school due to Staff Development for the Tahoma School District. So 2 tests were crammed into one day. Mimi stalled ALL WEEK long. I started sounding like a broken record and the wine at night was not helping to calm the nerves anymore.

Finally yesterday was the last straw when the little devil of the sassy attitude started to rear its ugly horns and as punishment, ALL ELECTRONICS are taken away. The time out chair is no longer useful. So that means no DVDs, computer, DSI, so on and so forth. She came close to losing out on a sleepover tonight.

So tonight on the way home from the competition, the little stinker tried to slip in a DVD on the car DVD player. That is until I turned it off and had to remind the girl of her punishment for all of the crap she dished out this past week. How fast they seem to conveniently forget. And as we are discussing her punishment, the child changes the subject......"Mom, do you know that it is night time in New York???" I think this child would make a great lawyer someday.

On a brighter note, she passed her tests with flying colors and recieved not one but two medals today. She won 2nd place in trampoline and 3rd in the double mini.

On top of all of this, the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan and my cousin Miura is still missing. PHEW!!! What a week and it is still not over.

STILL LIKES MAPS

A GIRL AND HER DOG

BOUNCY HOUSE

Had a slight change of plans today. Instead of lunch at the Japanese
Main Buffet, we had lunch at Mickey D's and then it was on to the
Bouncy House in Black Diamond. Not bad for a couple of hours of fun
with Xander, Owen and their family. Price was not to shabby either.....
$2.00. Not it is time to go buy her shoes for the father/daughter
dance and take Butch to Lake Wilderness so that he can get his wiggles
out too.

IDIOT

Dad says that he called Mike our homestudy guy yesterday. Mike says that he now understands WHY Bal Jagat is asking him for a whole bunch of information. It's because the homeland security is being really nit picky about everything. WHICH IS WHAT MAUSAMI FROM BAL JAGAT HAS BEEN TELLING HIM ALL ALONG!!!! Doh! I guess Mike just figures that Bal Jagat has nothing better to do other than send out more work for him to do.......idiot.

Mausami has been sending us e-mails saying that homeland security is really nit picking everything and if there is any info that is missing they will send it back to us to be corrected. These are the same e-mails that she has been sending our homestudy guy Mike.

ARGH!!! If you want to know what my pet peeves are........it's idiots!

WILD WINDS

The weatherman said that us folks here in western Washington were to get some wind today and boy was he right. We not only got the wild wind but rain as well. Going to pick Mimi up from school today was like the scene from Mary Poppins where all of the nanny applicants were being blown away by the wind. The rain was falling horizontally instead of vertically. Screw the umberella. We all just came home soaked.

On a brighter note Mimi passed both the math test and spelling test with flying colors. I knew that little whipper snapper could do it.

HAVE PASSPORT WILL TRAVEL

The passport arrived a couple of days ago and the homeland security papers arrived today. Slowly but surely we are inching along.

ANOTHER WATER GIRL

Just like her friend Samantha, Mimi is another water girl. Hard to believe that a mere 7 years ago this child was deathly afraid of the pool. Now I can barely get her out. This was taken last Sunday at Grandma's place.

Grandma also adores Mimi's friend Sara and always asks her to tag along however this past Sunday was Sara's 11th birthday and she had plans with her family.

Come this Saturday Mimi will be quite busy with a competition up in Kirkland (about an hour drive from our house) in the early afternoon, to be followed by a team dinner and then a sleepover/birthday party at Sara's. Then on Sunday Daphne will be taking the girls to their ESD meeting at the Seattle Culture Center. I asked Mimi what she does at the meeting to which the girl answered "The usual. Chase the boys." Sigh.......

I do know one thing for certain........our next little chili pepper better be just as active as Mimi. That would make my job so much easier.

MOTLEY CRUE

As they have been dubbed by Andre. Today Shelley wasn't feeling well
and asked if I could bring Zoe and Braden home. As I had Mimi, Cal,
Halli, Zoe and Braden with me already, what's a couple of more kids?
So I asked Andre. If he and his kids Olivia and Jack would like to
join us. At the same time Rachel and her brother Evan came along too
as they live on the same street ad Zoe. There you have it, the Motley
Crue.

WON'T YOU PLAY WITH ME????

A DAY AT THE PARK

As usual our plate is full this weekend and I love it. This morning started off with sleeping in for me. Finally got out of bed at 8:30 this morning and for me that is sleeping in. Usually I get out of bed at 7:00. Around 9 was when Blake called asking if Mimi could come over and play. She kind of hemmed and hawed about it which I thought was quite unusual for her. Normally she bolts out the door like lightening. But today was a bit different. She wanted him to come to our house and he wanted her to go over to his. Finally she said ok, got dressed, ate breakfast and headed over to Blake's. Meanwhile the light bulb came on in my head and I thought to myself "hmmmm, dad and I could go on a hot date for breakfast". So off to Testy Chef we went. Then dad had an appointment to get his hair cut. We arrived home about 12 and I called for Mimi to come home while dad went out to do his errands.

I can be a little devil at times and told Mimi that we went to Testy Chef without her. "DAD!!!! yelled the girl. Thinking that it was his idea to go. Oh well, you snooze you lose. It was then I received the message from Andre stating that he had the kids today and was taking them down to Lake Wilderness. It is about a one hour walk from our house. So Mimi, Butch and myself met with Andre, Olivia and Jack (Jackie as he is known to us) at the lake. I drove the car. The kids had oodles and oodles of fun together.

Next thing I knew they were all huddled together looking into the lake. Apparently they saw what they thought was a dead fish. Yep, it was a dead fish that is used for bait. Every year the lake gets filled with fish, Trout I think.

Then it was time to head for home but just before leaving we saw a woman walk/run her 3 Alpacas. It is unusual but not surprising as there are several Alpaca farms out here in the country. Mimi walked with Andre and the kids while Butch and I drove home.

Andre just called and so I will have to go get the child and bring her home as she has a wet tucus from slipping in the mud at the park.

THIS MORNING'S CONSTITUTIONAL

Before the rains came that is. Don't you just love the greenery? I
realized today why I hate the gym. Toooo boring. I love being outside.
There are so many trails for Butch and I to explore.